Boardgames To Go was one of first boardgame podcasts, starting in March 2005. It's still going strong, now relocated to Boardgamegeek. Meanwhile the old posts are archived here. The audio files of the podcast were unchanged by this, and you shouldn't even notice the change on your MP3 player.

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Friday, November 09, 2007

Last year, my buddy Dave Arnott and I talked on the phone about how we'd now been in the hobby for a decade. In that time the hobby was in many ways the same, but the interesting parts were the differences. Now we have Boardgamegeek, do a lot less overseas ordering, and I can't recall the last time I played a game with a separate page of card translations we all had to hand back & forth while playing. Seemed like a good idea for a podcast.

Then my podcast sort of went on hiatus, and so the decade has now become eleven years, or "decade+1." In our retrospective, we talked about a number of changes over the years, trying to talk about the hobby in general, but understandably drifting back to our own local experiences much of the time. We also tried to describe what we know about the hobby before we got into it. The earlier generation (of which my previous guest Mike Siggins was an important part).

This is one of my longest shows ever, but I decided to post the whole thing rather than two parts because some of you may need some boardgame material to listen to while on a long trip to BGG.con next week. Sadly, I won't be there, but Dave Arnott will! Be sure to tell him if you see him what you thought of the podcast.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark, thanks for this episode. It was really interesting and it also gave me some ideas about playing Eurogames before I joined the hobby.But there´s something in which I diasgree with you. During the show you were saying, that the "Spiel des Jahres" award is somehow ridiculous, because the games are too "light".Well, the "Spiel des Jahres" winner is considered to be a recommendation for "non-gamers" or "ocassional gamers". Usually families or grandparents who want to buy a gift for their grandchildren pick these games up. Given to this fact, the games should be light and still intriging . For my opinion most of the games meet these criteria quite well. E.g. "ticket to ride" is considered as the perfect "gateway-game" and has also won the "Spiel des Jahres" award.

Mark and Dave, thanks again for another enjoyable show. Dave, I enjoyed hearing your views and some of your analogies with the movie industry. I will say that I dissagree with most of your conclusions. But, I do enjoy hearing someone who has a well thought out opinion that just happens to be different than mine. I don't what to go into details about how we dissagree. I will say this episode has help me understand better how I feel about the hobby and where I think it is going.

Mark, I will say that I agree with you completely in regards to your feelings about "normal".

In 10 years, I do believe I will still be playing games but hope to play games with both you long before that.

Enjoyed the podcast. No, it wasn't boring listening to you two ramble on . I found it quite interesting. Disagree about the need for "normal" tho. Tho I've done very little RPGing I'd do it again, under the right circumstances. I've gotta say, once you're past 50, *bleep* normal, as long as you're having fun, and you aren't hurting anyone with your hobby. (Tho even I draw the line at wearing a costume at a game con. Maybe when I pass 60...) Best wishes, keep up the podcast!

Heh, the comments on normal kind of got to me as well. I can understand the desire to be more mainstream (and have more acceptance, resources, opponents, and so on). But, it always bugs me when that desire manifests itself by distancing from other non-mainstream groups that you perceive as not being as acceptable in hope of making your hobby look better by comparison.

Anyway, it was otherwise a great show, I ended up listening to most of it twice. Got me thinking about when I first posted on rec.games.board (somewhere about '95 or a little earlier - google groups archives are a bit spotty).

Also made me recall ordering my first passel of "German" games from Games People Play in Cambridge, and think about games that faded vs. those that have staying power.

I also think the view on what happened with strategy board wargames (chit games) is a little off - that hobby actually had been growing, and peaked before fading. I think it's been resurging, due in part, as you say, by riding the popularity of the euro-games.

And man, I wish I'd been able to get to a gathering of friends (back in the day, much less now).